At Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine, a new generation of doctors and dentists are involved in a novel approach to managing the opioid epidemic. The training includes instruction from reformed narcotic users, who act as teachers.

A 25-year-old woman recently explained to the first-year students how she became addicted to opioids at the age of 15, when a friend came over with Vicodin prescribed by a dentist after a tooth extraction.

Addiction, she said, is like having a deep itch inside that desperately needs to be scratched.

“There was nothing that could stand between me and getting high,” said the young woman, who wants to remain anonymous. “Most of the time it was my only goal for the day. At $40 a pill, I quickly switched to heroin which costs $10.”

The university’s Assistant Dean for Clinical Education Dr. Lisa Strano-Paul, who helped coordinate the session, said that “patients as teachers” is widely practiced in medical education. This is the first year reformed narcotic users are participating in the program.

“People’s stories will stick with these medical students for the rest of their lives,” she said. “Seeing such an articulate woman describe her experiences was impactful.”

Gerard Fischer, a doctor of dental surgery candidate from St. James, took part in the patient-as-teacher session on narcotics.

“You learn empathy, a quality people want to see in someone practicing medicine,“ Fischer said. “People don’t choose to become addicted to narcotics. So, you want to understand.”

After working in dental offices over the last several years, he’s noticed that habits for prescribing painkillers are changing.

“Dental pain is notoriously uncomfortable because it’s in your face and head,” he said. “No one wants a patient to suffer.” Pain management, though, requires walking a fine line, he added, saying, “Patient awareness is increasing, so many of them now prefer to take ibuprofen and acetaminophen rather than a prescription narcotic, which could be a reasonable approach.”

Hearing the young woman tell her story, he said, will undoubtedly influence his decision-making when he becomes a practicing dentist.

An estimated 180 medical and dental students attended the training last month. Overall, Strano-Paul said she’s getting positive feedback from the medical students about the session.

The woman who overcame addiction and shared her insights with the medical professionals, also found the experience rewarding.

We respect her request to remain anonymous and are grateful that she has decided to share her story with TBR News Media. For the rest of this article, we shall refer to her as “Claire.”

Faith, hope and charity

“I told the doctors that recovery has nothing to do with science,” Claire said. “They just looked at me.”

Claire was addicted to drugs and alcohol for seven years and went to rehab 10 times over the course of five years.

“I did some crazy things, I jumped out of a car while it was moving,” Claire said, shaking her head in profound disbelief.

She leapt from the vehicle, she said, the moment she learned that her family was on their way to a rehab facility. Fortunately, she was unharmed and has now been off pain pills and drugs for close to six years. She no longer drinks alcohol.

“Yes, it is possible to recover from addiction,” Claire said.

People with addiction issues feel empty inside, Claire explained, while gently planting her fist in her sternum. She said that once her counselor convinced her to pray for help and guidance, she was able to recover.

“Somehow praying opens you up,” she said.

Claire was raised Catholic and attended Catholic high school but says that she’s not a religious person.

“I said to my counselor, “How do I pray, if I don’t believe or know if there’s a God?”

She came to terms with her spirituality by appreciating the awe of nature. She now prays regularly. Recovery, she said, is miraculous.

Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step regimen, first published in 1939 in the post-Depression era, outlines coping strategies for better managing life. Claire swears by the “big book,” as it’s commonly called. She carefully read the first 165 pages with a counselor and has highlighted passages that taught her how to overcome addictions to opioids and alcohol. Being honest, foregoing selfishness, praying regularly and finding ways to help others have become reliable sources of her strength.

Spirituality is the common thread Claire finds among the many people she now knows who have recovered from addiction.

Medication-assisted therapy

Personally, Claire recommends abstinence over treating addiction medically with prescription drugs such as buprenorphine. The drug, approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration since 2002, is a slow-release opioid that suppresses symptoms of withdrawal. When combined with behavior therapy, the federal government recommends it as treatment for addiction. Medication alone, though, is not viewed as sufficient. The ultimate goal of medication-assisted therapy, as described on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services website on the topic, is a holistic approach to full recovery, which includes the ability to live a self-directed life.

“Medication-assisted therapy should not be discounted,” Strano-Paul said. “It improves the outcome and enables people to hold jobs and addresses criminal behavior tendencies.”

While the assistant dean is not involved with that aspect of the curriculum, the topic is covered somewhat in the clerkship phase of medical education during sessions on pain management and when medical students are involved in more advanced work in the medical training, she said.

The field, though, is specialized.

The federal government requires additional certification before a medical practitioner can prescribe buprenorphine. Once certified, doctors and their medical offices are further restricted to initially prescribe the medicine to only 30 patients annually. Critics say no other medications have government-mandated patient limits on lifesaving treatment.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, considers the therapy to be “misunderstood” and “greatly underused.”

In New York state, 111,391 medical practitioners are registered with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to prescribe opioids and narcotics. Only 6,908 New York practitioners to date are permitted to prescribe opioids for addiction treatment as at Aug. 31.

Strano-Paul for instance, pointed out that she can prescribe opioids, but is prohibited from prescribing the opioid-based drug used for addiction therapy.

The narcotics education program is still evolving, Strano-Paul said.

New medical student training now also includes certification for Narcan, the nasal spray antidote that revives opioid overdose victims.

“It saves lives,” Strano-Paul said.

In Suffolk County in 2017, 424 people died from an opioid overdose, which was 41 percent higher than the state average, according to a study titled “The Staggering Cost of Long Island’s Opioid Crisis.” The county is aware of 238 potentially lifesaving overdose reversals as of June 30 attributed to Narcan this year alone. Since 2012, Narcan has helped to save the lives of 3,864 people in the county.

As for Claire, now a mother, she delivered her children through C-section. In the hospital, she was offered prescription opioids for pain.

“No one will ever see me again, if you give me those pills,” she said.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital on July 23. Photo from SBU

By Carol A. Gomes

With the latest addition of Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital, Stony Brook Medicine further expands its role as a leading integrated health care system delivering increased care options to benefit our patients across Long Island.

The Stony Brook Medicine health care system now consists of Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH), Stony Brook Children’s Hospital (SBCH), Stony Brook Southampton Hospital (SBSH) and Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital (SBELIH). The system includes more than 1,200 physicians on the full-time faculty in the Renaissance School of Medicine and nearly 200 additional employed physicians in the community. Our ambulatory footprint is comprised of more than 100 outpatient care sites, strategically located to enhance convenient access to care.

The hospitals in the Stony Brook Medicine health care system will work together to provide access to the full range of health care services to East End residents, locally in the community and at SBUH, a world-class tertiary medical center. By combining our resources, we will match patients with the right type of care in the right facility.

Our objective is to improve coordination of complex episodes of care for our patients while at the same time improving efficiency and lowering the cost of care. To deliver this seamless care, we are making considerable incremental investments to facilitate caregiver communication, including integration of electronic medical records.

We look forward to further realizing the benefits of combining a large academic medical center with community-based hospitals. The latter offers unique academic and training opportunities for our residents and fellows. As clinical campuses and training sites, SBELIH and SBSH will help increase the number of physicians, specialists, allied health professionals and nurses on Eastern Long Island choosing to explore opportunities to practice medicine in community settings.

For example, Stony Brook Medicine already hosts a psychiatric residency program at SBELIH, and a new Mastery in General Surgery Fellowship program provides surgical fellows with four months of community hospital experience.

Stony Brook has also improved access to prehospital emergency care on the North Fork, with two EMS “fly cars,” staffed by paramedics who serve as first responders on the scene of emergencies. In the future, telehealth connections will be established between the emergency departments of SBUH and SBELIH, and on Shelter Island, to further improve direct access to Stony Brook Medicine specialists.

Fortunately, Stony Brook Medicine has a long history of working collaboratively with both of our community-based hospital partners to meet the needs of patients on the East End. Formalizing the relationship with SBSH two years ago and now adding SBELIH to the system will allow us to work even more closely together to improve access to medical and surgical services, as well as specialty care, and to offer new community-based health programs.

We look forward to creating even closer ties in the future as we further develop our integrated healthcare system, with the patient at the center of everything we do.

When choosing a hospital, whether for yourself or a loved one, it pays to have the peace of mind in knowing that you or your loved one will receive the highest quality of care. One way to help ensure that peace of mind is to do your homework.

We recently received news that will give the residents of Suffolk County and beyond one more reason to feel confident about choosing Stony Brook University Hospital for their health care needs. Our hospital has been named one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals™ for 2019 by Healthgrades, the first organization in the country to rate hospitals entirely on the basis of the quality of clinical outcomes.

Recipients of the America’s 100 Best Hospitals Award are recognized for overall clinical excellence based on quality outcomes for 34 conditions and procedures for 4,500 hospitals nationwide. Healthgrades reviews three years of Medicare and other inpatient data, comparing actual to predicted performance for specific and common patient conditions.

This impressive distinction was achieved by the entire Stony Brook University Hospital team working together to achieve one goal — to deliver on a commitment to provide every patient with exceptional care. We continuously put patient safety and quality of care first, while bringing cutting-edge services and evidence-based medicine to our community.

As one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals, Stony Brook University Hospital is in the top 2 percent of hospitals nationwide and one of only four hospitals in New York State exhibiting exemplary clinical excellence over the most recent three-year evaluation.

Stony Brook was also named one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals for cardiac care, coronary intervention and stroke care. I’m proud to report that our hospital is the only one in the entire U.S. Northeast region, and one of only two hospitals in the nation, to achieve America’s 100 Best Hospitals in all four of these categories.

With so many choices, it helps to understand that the quality of care you receive varies from hospital to hospital. Whether you are planning an elective surgery or you are admitted to our hospital unexpectedly, it’s important to know that at Stony Brook University Hospital, you’ll be at one of the nation’s best.

Stony Brook University Hospital plans to launch two mobile emergency room units in the spring designed to treat stroke patients.

Lifesaving service for the community

By Ernest J. Baptiste

Ernest Baptiste

According to a study in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke, when a blood vessel supplying the brain is blocked, nearly two million brain cells are lost for each minute that passes, making stroke one of the most time-sensitive diagnoses in medicine. The faster blood flow can be restored to the brain, the more likely that a person will have a full recovery.

That said, Suffolk County residents now have one more reason to look to Stony Brook Medicine for the highest level of care for both ischemic stroke (when a clot blocks the flow of blood to the brain) and hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding within the brain tissue).

This month we are launching Long Island’s first mobile stroke unit program — a revolutionary pre-hospital program designed to provide specialized, lifesaving care to people within the critical moments of stroke before they even get to the hospital.

While new to Long Island, mobile stroke units have successfully reduced stroke disability and have improved survival rates in other major metropolitan areas across the country. Stony Brook Medicine is collaborating with over 40 emergency medical service (EMS) agencies throughout Suffolk County to provide this lifesaving, time-sensitive care.

Each mobile stroke unit is a mobile emergency room with a full crew of first responders, brain imaging equipment and medications. The units also have telehealth capability to Stony Brook University Hospital, which allows our physicians at the hospital to communicate in real time with the crew and patient, and immediately check for a blocked vessel or bleeding in the brain. This helps to markedly accelerate the time needed to make an accurate stroke diagnosis.

The first responders onboard the mobile stroke unit can then begin administering time-sensitive, advanced stroke treatments while the person is en route to the nearest hospital that can provide them with the appropriate level of care.

The units are in operation seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., which is the window of time when most stroke calls are received in Suffolk County.

One is strategically stationed at a base station located off of the Long Island Expressway at Exit 57. The other, which will be launched soon, will be stationed similarly off of Exit 68. These locations were chosen for easy east-west and north-south access. The team will take calls within a 10-mile radius of each base, which includes about 40 different communities.

February means heart health awareness, but taking care of your heart requires a year-round commitment that has lifelong benefits. What will you do differently to take better care of your heart?

Dr. Joanna Chickwe

Heart disease can affect anyone, regardless of gender, age or background. That’s why all of our cardiac care experts at Stony Brook University Heart Institute remain focused on how to best prevent heart disease and heal the heart.

When you come to Stony Brook Heart Institute, you can depend on quality and expertise for every aspect of your cardiac care — care that exceeds national outcomes. A few examples:

• Our renowned team of interventional cardiologists have long been on the forefront for treating acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack. In fact, we exceed national outcomes and have the best outcomes on Long Island when it comes to bringing lifesaving heart emergency care to heart attack victims, as reported on the Hospital Compare* website.

• Our heart surgeons have a high degree of expertise in providing advanced approaches to coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) — a surgical procedure that uses blood vessels from other areas of your body to restore blood flow to your heart. Our Heart Institute has received a three-star rating — the highest awarded — from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) for overall patient care and outcomes in isolated CABG surgery. This distinguished award is in recognition of the isolated CABG procedures we performed from January to December 2017. The STS ratings are regarded as the definitive national reporting system for cardiac surgery.

• For patients with severe aortic stenosis (narrowing), Stony Brook is a leader in advancing the transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedure and is one of a select number of sites in the U.S. to offer this minimally invasive procedure for patients who are considered high, intermediate or low-risk for open surgery. Stony Brook has excellent long-term data on patient outcomes with TAVR, and we are a tertiary referral center for evaluation of aortic valve disease.

• And, for patients with heart failure, a condition where the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the needs of the body, our world-renowned experts at the Heart Failure and Cardiomyopathy Center help patients to restore their quality of life, limit their symptoms and understand their disease. We are proud that our patient outcomes for survival with heart failure are the best on Long Island and among the best nationally, according to Hospital Compare.

While we hope that you and your family never need acute cardiac services, you can be assured knowing that Long Island’s only Chest Pain Center with Primary PCI and Resuscitation is right in your community.

And, if you suspect a heart attack, please remember it’s best to call 911. Ambulances are equipped with defibrillators and most are equipped with 12-lead EKGs (electrocardiograms), which means they can transmit results to the hospital while en route. At Stony Brook, we assemble the treatment team and equipment you need before you arrive.

Want to do something today to learn about your heart health? Take a free heart health risk assessment at www.stonybrookmedicine.edu/hearthealth. Seeking a solution to a cardiac problem? Call us at 631-44-HEART (444-3278). We’re ready to help.

*Hospital Compare is a consumer-oriented national website that provides information on how well hospitals provide recommended care to their patients managed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Dr. Joanna Chikwe is the director of the Stony Brook University Heart Institute, chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery and the T.F. Cheng Endowed Professor of Surgery.

New name honors long-standing support fromRenaissance Technologies families

By Kenneth Kaushansky, M.D.

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

There’s an old adage that things get better with age: The relationship between Stony Brook University and the families of Renaissance Technologies is certainly proof of that, having maintained a close connection for more than 35 years.

Throughout the years, 111 families at Renaissance Technologies have donated more than $500 million to the university. Now in recognition of their contributions and generosity, Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., Stony Brook University president, recently announced that Stony Brook University School of Medicine will now be known as the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. This new name was recently voted on and approved by the board of trustees of the State University of New York.

The relationship began in 1982 when Jim Simons, the former chair of the Department of Mathematics at Stony Brook University, made a $750 unrestricted gift to the university’s annual fund, becoming the first at Renaissance Technologies to contribute to the Long Island institution.

Since that time, current and former employees of Renaissance Technologies and their families have donated more than $500 million to date in support of Stony Brook’s students, faculty and primarily research in life sciences and medicine. This significant investment has improved the quality of medical education at Stony Brook, creating 34 endowed faculty chairs and professorships, nine innovative academic and research centers and $35 million for student scholarships and fellowships.

Gifts have supported areas where the personal interests of the Renaissance families intersect with the strategic investment needs of the university, such as Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, basic science research, imaging, health care for those who are underserved, cancer research, medicine and the Staller Center for the Arts.

This incredible engagement by Renaissance employees and their 111 donor families — very few of whom attended our university — has created a true “renaissance” at Stony Brook.

As dean of the School of Medicine, I’m so proud that our school will carry their name in recognition of the excellence they’ve helped create at Stony Brook. During the Campaign for Stony Brook alone, more than 72 Renaissance Technologies employees and their families donated $166.5 million that directly benefited Stony Brook Medicine and the School of Medicine and a total of over $400 million to the university as a whole.

The Renaissance School of Medicine is the top-ranked public medical school in New York State and ranks 57th in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report.

A member of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and a Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)-accredited medical school, the Renaissance School of Medicine was established in 1971. With 25 academic departments, it trains over 500 medical students and more than 750 medical residents and fellows annually.

The investments in medicine and throughout Stony Brook by Renaissance families have transformed the university and the communities it serves by deploying the most inventive new solutions to the most important issues of our time.

And as the years go on, things will only get better as their contributions ensure continued access to groundbreaking medical treatments and leading-edge, innovative medical care for the residents of Suffolk County and beyond.

Kenneth Kaushansky, M.D., is the senior vice president of Health Sciences and dean of Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Bertha Madras will be the keynote speaker at Stony Brook University's 9th annual Meeting of the Minds symposium

By Ernest J. Baptiste

Ernest J, Baptiste

Not a week goes by without a news story referencing the misuse of, addiction to, treatment of and deaths caused by opioids. And it’s no wonder. While the United States accounts for 4.4 percent of the world’s population (per U.S. Census Bureau figures), we consume 30 percent of prescribed opioids worldwide, according to the International Narcotics Control Board.

Sadly, within New York State, Suffolk County bears the brunt of this notoriety. Based on information from the NYS Department of Health, between 2009 and 2013, the county reported 337 heroin-related deaths — more than any other county in our state.

As Suffolk County’s only academic medical center, Stony Brook Medicine has the clinical, research and educational expertise to lead our community in the battle against addiction. We have a duty and an obligation to do so. For years we have worked closely with both Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and Eastern Long Island Hospital to help those affected by the opioid crisis.

In 2017, we took our commitment a step further by launching an Addiction Psychiatry Division. Our team of experts evaluates, diagnoses and treats people who suffer from one or more disorders related to addiction. They also conduct research into the causes and effective interventions for addiction and train our health are professionals in how to better identify and treat addiction.

In addition to treating those affected by the opioid epidemic, it’s also important to have a forum where the physicians and nurse practitioners, who have the authority to dispense prescriptions for pain medication, can explore, and develop, with input from the public, the future of pain management medicine.

This was the premise for a recent conference panel discussion held in August at Stony Brook University Hospital titled, Changing Perceptions About Pain Management and Opioid Use Across the Continuum of Care. During the panel discussion, Stony Brook experts exploredcurrent issues in the practice of managing chronic and acute pain. The event was part of our Ethical Decision Making Series and attracted over 100 clinicians and members of the community.

This month, Stony Brook has two more opioid epidemic-related events planned.

On Thursday, Oct. 18, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital will present its 5th annual Addiction Medicine Symposium at Stony Brook Southampton University, Avram Theatre, 39 Tuckahoe Road, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The goal is to help increase knowledge and improve performance of medical staff members, residents, nurses and other health care professionals when working with patients who suffer from addiction. To learn more, visit http://cme.stonybrookmedicine.edu.

The following day, Friday, Oct. 19, the opioid epidemic will be the focus when the Stony Brook University Neurosciences Institute hosts its 9th annual Meeting of the Minds symposium at Stony Brook University’s Charles B. Wang Center, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The free event is open to physicians and other health care professionals, researchers, students and anyone with an interest in the opioid epidemic.

Experts from Stony Brook Medicine will present, discuss and explore the clinical implications of their scholarly research findings and discuss translational and informatics approaches to the opioid epidemic. This year’s keynote speaker will be Bertha Madras, a prominent psychobiologist, public policy maker and member of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Breakfast will be provided and a discussion and Q&A will follow each presentation. To learn more, visit www.neuro.stonybrookmedicine.edu/motm.

Let’s fight the opioid epidemic together as a community so that our children and future generations of Long Islanders won’t have to.

Recently the New York State Department of Health (DOH) reported elevated levels of leukemia, bladder cancer, thyroid cancer and lung cancer in three central Long Island communities — Farmingville, Selden and Centereach.

As Suffolk County’s only academic-based cancer research facility, Stony Brook University Cancer Center has researchers working with DOH scientists to interpret the data and look at possible causes of these high incidence rates.

More information and analysis are needed

The state’s reports raise important questions about possible reasons, what the results mean and what can be done to change them. First, we need to determine which subtypes of the four cancers are responsible for these higher incidence rates. Each type of cancer can be divided into subtypes, based on certain characteristics of the cancer cells, and these subtypes may have distinct causes and risk factors. It’s important to know the subtype of a cancer to identify the possible causes.

Also, it is important to know whether mortality rates from these cancers are higher in the three Long Island communities than they are in the rest of the state. This information is critical because sometimes increases in incidence rates are due to improved diagnosis and detection. We must determine if the data in the DOH study truly are the results of higher incidences, which can be assessed by determining whether the higher incidence rates have translated into higher mortality rates.

Findings for Farmingville, Centereach and Selden

Bladder cancer, lung cancer, thyroid cancer and leukemia were diagnosed at statistically significant elevated levels in Farmingville, Centereach and Selden, according to the DOH data. The cancer incidences were identified with information from the New York State Cancer Registry.

The registry collects reports on cancer diagnoses from health care providers, which include the sites of tumors, the stages when diagnosed, the cell types of the cancer, treatment information and demographic information. Every person diagnosed with cancer in New York state is reported to the registry. The incidences also were identified from statistical mapping of neighborhoods in the three communities.

We learned that, from 2011 to 2015, the following number of cases occurred:

• 311 cases of lung cancer, 56 percent above statewide rate

• 112 cases of bladder cancer, 50 percent above statewide rate

• 98 cases of thyroid cancer, 43 percent above statewide rate

• 87 cases of leukemia, 64 percent above statewide rate

Cancer research

With all the resources of an academic medical center, the Stony Brook Cancer Center will move quickly to examine the findings from this study.

Transforming cancer care is the driving force behind the construction of our new cancer center, which will be located in the 240,000-square-foot, eight-story Medical Research and Translation (MART) building opening in November. It is where researchers will revolutionize breakthrough medical discoveries and create lifesaving treatments to deliver the future of cancer care today.

For more information on the DOH study, or the Stony Brook Cancer Center, call us at 631-638-1000 or visit www.cancer.stonybrookmedicine.edu.

Dr. Yusuf A. Hannun is the director of the Stony Brook University Cancer Center and vice dean for cancer medicine.

Knowing the signs of a stroke and getting help quickly can save your life.

By Ernest J. Baptiste

Ernest Baptiste

Stroke can affect people of all ages and backgrounds. When you have a stroke, you lose nearly two million brain cells for each minute that passes until normal blood flow is restored to your brain. No wonder it’s a leading cause of disability. It’s also the fifth-leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States.

We’re encouraged that there has been a decline in stroke deaths over the past few years — due in part to increased awareness of the signs of stroke, people seeking treatment faster and improvements in the types of treatments available — but our work is far from done.

Knowing the signs of stroke and getting help quickly can save your life or that of a loved one. Signs include sudden loss of balance, sudden loss of vision in one or both eyes, an uneven facial expression, numbness or weakness in one arm and/or leg or disrupted speech. If you suspect you’re having a stroke, call 911 immediately. Let the operator know and ask to be taken to a stroke center where advanced treatments are available.

It is certainly a testament to the advanced level of quality stroke care provided at Stony Brook University Hospital that our stroke center was recently certified by The Joint Commission as a Comprehensive Stroke Center — the highest level a stroke center can achieve. To receive this advanced certification, we underwent a rigorous screening process.

This certification is awarded only to institutions that provide advanced care to patients with exceptional, around-the-clock treatment.

As the first and only certified Comprehensive Stroke Center in Suffolk County — the second on Long Island and one of only 11 in New York State — Stony Brook joins an elite group. Nationally, approximately 200 hospitals out of 5,800 have earned this designation.

While we hope that you or someone you love never experiences a stroke, it’s important to know that you have the most advanced level of stroke care just minutes away at SBU. For the thousands of Long Islanders who survive a stroke and face a tough road ahead, we offer help as well.

Our Stony Brook Stroke Support Group provides encouragement and feedback from others who can relate to a stroke survivor’s and/or their family member’s situation, as well as tips about helpful programs and resources.

Although this advanced certification is a significant achievement for Stony Brook University Hospital, it is our patients and the communities we serve who benefit the most from having this level of stroke care available close to home. As a certified comprehensive stroke center, we provide a level of care that few hospitals anywhere can match.

Ernest J. Baptiste is the chief executive officer at Stony Brook University Hospital.

One Life to Give – NEW TRAILER!

Port Jefferson Village Map

DeLIcious Dining: Elegant Eating

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